Supersonic air travel once seemed like an inevitability. Yet only 2 supersonic airliners have flown, and only one lasted more than one year. This is how the Concorde failed to take off. I hope this post will clear up some false nostalgia.
After Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, it seemed like there was no limit to how fast humans could travel. The Douglas DC-3, by far the most common airliner in the 1940s thanks to the war, could manage just 200 mph in 1945. The jet powered Boeing 707, introduced in 1958, could go 600 mph. And since we had been going faster since the horse was replaced by the steam train, it seemed like it was inevitable that regular supersonic service was coming in the near future.
British aircraft companies had been looking into the concept since the early 50s and by the end of the decade several prototypes had been designed. But there was a problem: designing the first ever supersonic airliner was far too expensive for any of Britain’s aircraft companies, even after they merged into British Aerospace Corporation in 1960. They needed help from another company and from taxpayers.
In the 50s and 60s, Western European governments, even nominally conservative ones, took a favorable view of economic planning. In France, there was even a name for it: dirigisme. So, the French and British governments decided why not pay for the development of this new supersonic airliner? It could earn tremendous amounts of foreign currency at a time when exchange rates were fixed and devaluing a currency to end a balance of payments crisis was an embarrassing admittance of defeat for any government. So, when BAC and French Airmaker Sud suggested that London and Paris finance the development, the respective governments were only too happy to do so. The Anglo-French treaty was signed on November 29, 1962. The name Concorde was to reflect the symbolism of international harmony between the two countries, but ironically, the name itself was not conducive to concord. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan wanted the English spelling “Concord” instead of the extra French “e”, allegedly out of spite toward French President Charles De Gaulle. In 1967, Britain’s Minister for Industry Tony Benn changed it to “Concorde”, saying that the “E” stood for “England”.
In 1964, Britain got a new Labour government under PM Harold Wilson. Wilson had campaigned against expensive state sponsored aircraft projects, most infamously the TSR-2. But because of the enormous penalties in the treaty if Britain had pulled out, the project went forward. The initial cost was supposed to be 70 million pounds with service to begin in 1970.
1964 brought a more serious threat. Travelling faster than the speed of sound creates an effect known as a sonic boom. To make it simple, it’s caused by sound waves unable to get out of their own way colliding and creating a wave that can be heard from the ground and can cause property damage. Contrary to popular belief, the sonic boom is not a one time thing, it’s a continuous effect that occurs in a cone produced by the airplane’s wake. The US Air Force decided to test how much of a problem this would be by flying supersonic in F-101 and B-58s over Oklahoma City. The people there were initially excited by this experiment and the local Chamber of Commerce held a party on the day the test began on February 3, 1964. But soon, the excitement turned into annoyance. The sonic booms broke 147 windows on downtown skyscrapers and there were thousands of damage claims filed. Civic groups immediately began protesting. The tests were halted in July. If just 8 booms per day could cause so much trouble, this would mean there was no way that supersonic airplanes could be allowed to fly over land.
But for a while, that problem was on the back burner. The threat from this new jet seemed so great that the United States Government started its own supersonic airliner project, the Boeing 2707. The Soviets also got in on the action with the Tupolev TU-144. Concorde prototype 002 made its maiden flight on May 2, 1969 going from Bristol to Gloucester, a flight of just 50 miles at a top speed of just 288 mph. The first supersonic flight was made on October 1, 1969 in France. By now the estimated date for service had been pushed back to 1974 and costs had spiralled dramatically.
1969 also saw the first flight of a very different type of aircraft; the Boeing 747. The 747 was a subsonic jet that could carry more people than any airliner before it, 276 passengers against Concorde’s 130. In January 1970, the first 747 flew in commercial service with Pan Am and Boeing was flooded with orders. The 747’s easy and trouble-free conception compared to Concorde’s was an omen. By 1970, it was questioned whether the Concorde would ever enter service. The next 3 years were bad. First, in 1971, the US cancelled its own supersonic project which gave hope to Concorde opponents across the pond. In addition to fears about sonic booms, there was a scare over whether having hundreds of planes fly at 60,000 feet would damage the ozone layer. In 1973, the US banned overland supersonic travel. That dramatically limited Concorde’s potential market. 1973 was also the year of the energy crisis and airlines were not interested in a new gas guzzling plane. Between January and April of that year alone, 10 airlines cancelled their orders: Pan Am, Continental, American, TWA, Middle East, Japan Airlines, Sabena, Eastern, Braniff, and Lufthansa. Qantas, United, and Air Canada had already cancelled orders and in 1975, Air India cancelled theirs. Only the state-owned airlines of the two countries developing the aircraft, Air France and British Airways, kept their orders. The worst blow came in 1976: New York City banned Concorde from JFK airport. Flights to New York from London or Paris were by far the most profitable of the routes that had been available. They were allowed to land at Dulles, but the French and British wanted their jet to be able to get passengers to New York goddamit. In February 1977, an appeals court lifted the ban and the route to New York was now open.
Concorde finally flew commercial with British Airways from London Heathrow to Washington Dulles on January 21, 1976. The project was 6 years behind schedule and the cost had ballooned to 1 billion pounds.
The aircraft was a magnificent work of engineering. It could fly 1300 mph. This enabled it to cross the Atlantic in 3 hours. It was faster than the rotation of the earth, this meant that if you flew to New York, moved your watch back 5 hours to account for the time difference, you’d find you’d “arrived before you left”. The Rolls Royce Olympus turbojet engines produced 32,000 pounds of thrust and had a thermal efficiency of 43%, the highest at the time. The plane had a long nose for aerodynamic efficiency, this could be lowered for improved visibility during taxiing. The amount of friction produced by the speed meant the windows were warm to the touch and the fuselage would expand by a foot in-flight. It was widely remarked how quiet and smooth the plane was even at speed. The only way you could tell you were going supersonic was through a speedometer installed in the cabin.
But there are many problems with designing an airliner for just speed. The fuselage had to be narrow, with seating limited to just 128. And turbojet engines are extremely inefficient at low speeds. This meant tremendously high fuel consumption of about 15 miles per gallon per passenger. A Boeing 747 could manage 3 times that. Airplanes are incredibly expensive to design, and Concorde especially so. Aircraft makers hope pray that they can get lots of orders to spread out the fixed R&D costs. Only 20 Concordes were built, making for very high costs per unit. The upshot of this is that a transatlantic ticket on Concorde went for over $6,000 inflation adjusted. When someone says we used to be able to supersonic, be sure to mention that “we” did not include anyone of normal means. There was much more legroom and champagne than in today’s economy class seats, but that’s not a fair comparison. Today’s first class seats are far more comfortable than Concorde.
Concorde actually managed to turn a profit for British Airways after they discovered people assumed fares were more expensive than they were and raised them accordingly. But mostly, it was just a gimmick. It was a great plane for their advertising but that was the most that most of their passengers saw of it. Air France never turned a profit on their Concordes but saw it as a loss leader. The Boeing 747 became the true workhorse of transatlantic service.
Concorde led a mostly uneventful service life until July 25, 2000. At Charles De Gaulle Airport, a Continental Airlines DC-10 left behind a titanium strip on the runway. 5 minutes later, a Concorde, Air France 4560, ran over the debris during takeoff. This punctured a tire and sent debris into the engines and punctured a fuel tank. The fuel ignited, the engines and wing were damaged by fire, and the plane wound up crashing into a hotel. Nobody on board survived. All Concordes were grounded during the investigation. Service resumed after safety improvements… in November 2001. With the airline industry being hammered by 9/11, this was very bad timing.
On October 24, 2003, Concorde made its last flight from New York to London Heathrow. It was the end of an era. But the truth is that Concorde was doomed before it flew. It was nothing more than a glorified business jet developed at taxpayer’s expense. It could only carry 130 people and travel over the sea. Most peoples’ lives were not affected by Concorde’s retirement.
But that hasn’t stopped the nostalgia. Many concepts have been floated for bringing back supersonic flight, none of which so far have gone anywhere. Airlines these days are laser focused on cutting costs. They’ve found that while people may say they want more legroom and more speed, they aren’t willing to put their money where their mouth is, meaning that any supersonic aircraft that’s more expensive to fly than a subsonic one has no chance. If we’re ever going to fly supersonic airliners, the plane would probably need to be powered by electricity, which would require lightweight batteries and a type of electric engine that can handle high speeds, which today’s electric fanjets can’t. This could be done through electromagnetic propulsion, but to be economical, that would require very high temperature superconductors, which we don’t have yet. This plane would also need to carry a lot more people, but a larger fuselage makes the plane heavier and requires even larger wings. Super lightweight carbon nanotubes could enable smaller wings to support a larger fuselage, but currently, nanotubes are far more expensive than aluminum. We would also need a radically different wing and fuselage design to eliminate the sonic boom. So for now, we’re stuck at 500 mph with no legroom.